The Apologies

The first woman waited beside Peter Haines’s car with both hands wrapped around a padded envelope. He noticed her while crossing the library parking lot, because the building had closed ten minutes earlier and his was the only car left beneath the lamps. She knew his name before he spoke. “Mr. Haines, I owe you an apology,” she said, then gave him a strained smile that suggested she had rehearsed a better opening. Peter kept several feet between them and asked whether she had attended one of his tax workshops. The library hosted them each February, and worried strangers sometimes stopped him in shops to ask about deductions. She shook her head and held out the envelope. “My name is Susan Vale. I took your work and put my name on it. Everything I have came from that.” Peter did not accept the envelope. Susan explained that they had studied economics together at Wycliffe University in 1997, where Peter had spent two years writing a dissertation about municipal debt. She had copied his…